Photoethnography

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Photography and Ethnography

Since its invention in 1839, photography has regularly been used in anthropologyin a variety of ways and with changing intentions; but the discipline’s handling of themedium has still not reached full maturity. Anthropology still remains first andforemost a science of words (Mead 1975). So, for example, there are scarcely any initiatives for making the photographs taken during field research accessible to a widerpublic. Pictures are simply used as aids in presentations, or in publications merely as»support« for academic texts. The anthropologist David MacDougall made the trenchantpoint that anthropologists were indeed interested in the visual, but had no idea what to do with it (MacDougall 2006). The anthropologist Barbara Wolbert assumesthat photography has remained a blind spot for anthropology because of its manipulativepotential. Identifying the fact that a photograph always gives away as much aboutthe person who took it as the person depicted, she concludes that anthropologists areconcerned to keep the origins of their texts, their local fieldwork, and their relationshipswith the local population away from the public (Wolbert 1998). This may wellbe correct in individual cases, but apart from the fact that texts are also capable ofdoing this, anthropology would be depriving itself of an essential resource for mediatingcultures if it failed to take full advantage of photography’s potential.One common feature of photography and anthropology is that both can show what is particular to us and what is alien, and at the same time to make us aware of this. The American literary and cultural critic Susan Sontag came up with the following analogy in one of her most famous essays, On Photography:

Like a pair of binoculars with no right or wrong end, the camera makes exotic things near, intimate; and familiar things small, abstract, strange, much farther away. It offers, in one easy, habit-forming activity, both participation and alienation in our own lives and those of others – allowing us to participate, while confirming alienation. (Sontag 1977: p. 167).

(from the Introduction of “Kyrgyzstan: a photoethnography of Talas” 2007 Hirmer Verlag)

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Hi Judith and all, I have edited a book called VISUAL INTERVENTIONS, which is published with Berghahn. It has chapters from anthropologists doing applied work in a series of different contexts (health, conflict and disaster, 'community' development, industry, development. Most of these anthropologists have been working with video, although some with photography.

@ Sarah: thanks. I ordered the book for our library at the MPI in Halle.
Question to you (and all others): Can you think of an (ethnographic) documentary or other visual materials on 'visual interventions' by anthropologists?
I am currently teaching a seminar on concepts of development and transformation in postcolonial and postsocialist societies to undergraduates. Part of the seminar is devoted to applied anthropology. Since half of my students would like to work in the development sector later on, I will be discussing the various roles anthropologists have had in this regard ... But we also want to explore anthropologists' contemporary engagement that goes beyond pure consultancy for international organizations. I am particularly interested in discussing with them how applied visual anthropology (esp photography) is/could be used in development cooperation. So the question is: does anybody know of visual material which could be shown to students in order to give them not only an idea but also images of this kind of applied anthropology?

Well in my own work I have used my own or tried to understand other people's photography in different ways. So when I was doing research about women and bullfighting in Spain I became a serious amateur bullfight photographer, then in more recent work about the slow city movement here in UK I have been trying to understand how people use photography in their own local projects to represent aspects of their own embodied and affective experiences. But apart from that there are a series of interesting works that I discuss in my book on visual ethnography. But I think the essential thing is to find the appropriate use of the camera - and the right medium too - when working with the visual in ethnographic research

@Jan: interesting comment. I would like to hear more about this dilemma and how you solve it during fieldwork. In my case it was the opposite: I used the camera not as a documentary instrument, but as an important means of communication. In the beginning of my fieldwork photography was a way to establish the first connections to my informants and during and after fieldwork it was a way to reciprocate in a way which was locally considered appropriate ...
@Dan: Right.
@ Sarah: Hi! Yes there are and it would be nice to bring them together here and see whether we can come up with new ones ... Do you have some specific ones in mind?

I think this is a great idea for a group, although personally I would be a bit more optimistic than the introductory statement, as I think there already exist plenty of rather interesting uses of photography in ethnographic practice.

Hi Maximilian,
thanks for your comment - nice getting to know you. Rgd. your question: I thought I start with what I know best. But of course we could later merge the group with a more general visual anthropology group. I personally think that photography could use a little support. It has become the stepchild of visual anthropology which is mostly associated with film...